The Hawaii Foodbank is providing food to pantries at 35 Oahu schools to supplement the meals of students who don’t get enough food at home, including during the summer months when a school lunch is not available as their most consistent meal.

The Food 4 Keiki School Pantry Program and three other food bank plans are meant to take the bite out of the bitter finding that nearly 1 in 3 households in the state experienced food insecurity in 2023, according to a Hawaii Foodbank report.

When the report was released in May, Hawaii Foodbank President and CEO Amy Miller said, “In households with food insecurity, 29% had children experiencing food insecurity. Six percent of children didn’t eat for a whole day because there wasn’t enough money for food.”

Miller worried that insufficient food at such a young age could lead to physical, cognitive and developmental impairment, resulting in lower academic achievement.

In addition to Oahu, the Food 4 Keiki School Pantry Program also serves 14 schools on Kauai and one on Niihau, a total of 50. On the Big Island and Maui, Hawaii Foodbank partners supply the school pantries in their districts.

“We are in full swing,” said Laura Zysman, director of keiki nutrition at Hawaii Foodbank, who is putting in 18-hour days to oversee the four programs, mostly with the help of volunteers.

The pantry program started in 2018, a carryover from the agency’s popular backpack program that supplied students with enough food for the weekend. Kids would pick up the backpacks after school on Fridays and return them the following Monday to be refilled. But it was too costly to run, and only a few schools could be served, she said.

“There was such a huge demand” for the backpacks from parents at other schools that Hawaii Foodbank started the pantry program where there was a high percentage of at-risk students eligible for free or discounted lunches, Zysman said. Nonperishable food, fresh produce, rice, milk and bread are usually distributed when parents come to pick up their kids after school.

Of the 35 Oahu schools with access to pantries during the school year, 24 are receiving supplies on a reduced basis during the summer, depending on the number of students in attendance and the activities offered. For instance, a pantry may be opened for fewer hours or less frequently per week, or just provide healthy snacks versus other groceries, Zysman said. She estimated that on average, roughly 10% of the kids at a school use the pantries.

Though most people associate the food bank with supplying canned goods, for the keiki pantry program in particular, “we really are focusing a lot now on healthy items, fresh local produce, making sure they have the nutrition they need to have healthy lives, to be academically successful and not have health conditions associated with poor nutrition. So it’s not necessarily just about feeding keiki; it’s about making sure that they have access to healthy food,” Zysman said.

But she acknowledged that people might not always make the healthiest choices. The food bank provides white rice because the people they service predominantly prefer it over the more nutritious brown; bags of fiber-rich, uncooked beans are not as popular as canned versions; and the kids get excited over sugar-­laden muffins and pastries when they are donated.

“It’s a balance between healthy and what people want. It’s not one-size-fits-all because we have so many different cultures in Hawaii,” she said.

Evelyn Barut, a community schools coordinator with the YMCA Kalihi branch, has run the food pantry at Sanford B. Dole Middle School since it opened in October. About 475 families have registered to pick up groceries, which are available after school on Mondays and Wednesdays during the summer. During the regular school year, the pantry is also open on Fridays.

“Our food pantry is like a grocery store. We don’t pack it for them; they come look and take what they need,” Barut said.

Hawaii Foodbank restocks the pantry every Monday with about 250 pounds of food, including fresh produce. Some families come twice a week, though most just come on Mondays. They typically get to choose from two kinds of vegetables and one fruit among the produce, and the kids are fond of the apples and oranges, Barut said.

The keiki line up especially when they see bread products that include desser­tlike items. She said they enjoy choosing something their families will like, saying, “Look what I got!”

Tina Pero, who has a daughter entering the eighth grade in the fall, said she most often takes home fresh produce and bread — which are expensive in the stores — for her family. She started volunteering in January to help families select and pack their groceries, mostly on Mondays, when the lines are longest.

“The pantry really helped, now that we’re not on SNAP,” Pero said, referring to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps families supplement their grocery budget. “We don’t qualify for SNAP because our income is over the limit.”

Zysman said when summer school is over the first week of July, most pantries will close until the school reopens about a month later. But at Dole, Barut said families can call the school office to see whether they can still pick up canned goods, as the pantry is well stocked — “we have a lot of green beans.”

Other food programs offered by Hawaii Foodbank include:

>> Child and Adult Care Food Program: Starting in January under a federal grant, it provides a meal to children 18 years and under who attend after-school programs at seven schools where at least 50% of the population is eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch.

>> Summer Food Service Program: Dubbed the Kau Kau 4 Keiki Program, it provides 500 keiki at five rural sites with seven breakfasts and seven lunches. Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the program supplies roughly 30 pounds of food a week per child, so if a family has three kids, they receive a total of 90 pounds of food per week.

>> Feeding Our Future Program: This program works in partnership with the Sodexo Foundation, based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa kitchen. It provides hot meals that are picked up by staff and served each day at five programs, such as the YMCA and the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, totaling almost 10,000 meals this summer.